


A Daisy in Skyhold

by barbex



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/M, Meet-Cute, The Black Emporium Exchange
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-07
Updated: 2020-09-07
Packaged: 2021-03-06 14:42:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,569
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26280580
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/barbex/pseuds/barbex
Summary: Alrahel Lavellan didn't even realize how lonely he is as the lone dalish in Skyhold until one day, Varric introduces him to an old friend from Kirkwall. And she is wonderful!
Relationships: Male Lavellan/Merrill (Dragon Age)
Comments: 8
Kudos: 13
Collections: Black Emporium 2020





	A Daisy in Skyhold

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SeigePhoenix](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SeigePhoenix/gifts).



* * *

"Hey, Singer," Varric calls to him as he walks rather aimlessly into Skyhold's main hall. 

It's funny that Varric calls him Singer, even though he has never sung in this hall. It would probably sound amazing, with the high walls and high ceiling. But there is never a quiet moment in Skyhold and he is much too careful to sing songs of dalish gods for everyone to hear. People sing for him, andrastian hymns and songs. They even add him to the songs now. He shudders to think that they will sing songs of him and their prophet, even after he is long gone.

"Yes, Writer?"

Varric chuckles and gestures to him to follow him. "I want you to meet someone. Take your coat with you." He leads him out of the hall and towards the main gate, occasionally looking over his shoulder. 

Alrahel wraps his cloak around his shoulders and clasps it closed in front of his chest. "Another secret friend of yours?" 

"Well..." Varric looks up to him, for once not smiling. "Let's just say that I'm careful with anybody from Kirkwall around Cassandra. She kidnapped me, after all, and I'm pretty sure she hasn't given up on finding Anders through his friends."

That has him perk up. "So this is a friend of Anders, the rebel mage?" He waits for Varric to answer but the dwarf stays quiet. "Varric?"

Varric startles and gives him an apologetic grin. "Such a question. We were all friends, friends of Hawke. But I don't know if we would have been friends without Hawke, you know?"

Alrahel nods. "Yes, I do understand that. It's a bit like now, all of you are here because of me and my hand. Would we be friends without that?" If they are even that, he's never quite sure with the people around him.

"We never would have met," Varric says, matter of factly. He looks up to Alrahel as they step through the gate out on the winding path that leads down the mountain. "But I'm glad we met and could become friends."

A smile spreads on Alrahel's face and he only now realizes how much he has hoped that Varric considers him a friend. "I'm glad we're friends too."

Varric smiles at him and nods. He leads them further down the path to a small copse of trees. At first, Alrahel can't see anyone but then he notices a figure sitting in the shade in a patch of flowers. He lets Varric go first, to greet his friend and waits for him to call him over.

"Hey Daisy, I'm back."

"Varric!" 

Alrahel watches a slim elven woman jump up from the flowers and hug Varric. In the sunlight he can see her vallaslin and with a joyful pinch in his chest he realizes that she's dalish, the first dalish he has seen since the explosion of the temple.

Varric turns to him and throws a flourish gesture towards the elvish woman. "This is Merrill of clan Sabrae. Merrill, meet Inquisitor Alrahel of clan Lavellan."

"Aneth ara, Merrill." His throat feels like old bark, his voice scratching over it. How long has it been since he spoke to one of his people? One of the dalish? 

"Aneth ara, Alrahel," Merrill says. 

Her smile is so beautiful that it takes his breath away. She holds out her hand, palm up, and he steps closer to lay his closed fingers on hers to greet her. Her magic hums against his own as their fingers touch.

Merrill's smile gets even wider and her eyes flit over his face. "You look just like Varric described you."

"Varric did?"

She takes her hand away and bends down to pick up a large bag to strap on her back and a bundle of flowers that she seemed to have picked as she waited. "Yes, Varric described you in his letters as 'a beautiful elf with a soft smile and kind eyes and so dalish that fennecs follow him around'."

Alrahel feels a blush creep up his cheeks. "Ehm, that's..." He turns to Varric, who hides his face in his palm.

"Thanks, Daisy," Varric says, a snicker in his voice. "I always wanted Alra here to know how beautiful I think he is." 

"Of course! Why would you not?" Merrill tightens the straps of her pack but as she looks at Varric, her smile falls. "Was that wrong?"

"No," Varric hurries to say, "it was perfectly fine. Never change, sweet Daisy." 

Merrill smiles a bit insecurely and Alrahel is ready to slay any beast that would threaten her smile again. "Did you have a long journey?" he asks to distract her.

"Yes, this place is really far out. I was lucky that one of the merchants let me ride on his wagon the way up here. In return I cooled his smoked sausages."

Alrahel has a sudden image in mind of a human merchant staring at a dalish mage casually freezing his wares. 

Varric seems to have a similar image in mind because he chuckles to himself. 

"So, ehm," Alrahel looks from Varric to Merrill. "Did Varric invite you here or did you want to come?"

"A bit of both, I think," Varric says. "Merrill is a, how can we say, a scholar? Historian? She has been collecting information about elven writing and art for years and I thought..."

"A scholar," Merrill says quietly. "I like that. I'm a scholar of elven history." She smiles again and Alrahel wants to drown in that smile until it is all he can see.

Varric continues. "I just thought, with what Solas told you about the orb and how strangely he behaves sometimes, maybe we could use another expert. I wrote to Daisy about what is happening here to see if she's interested and the next letter I get from her, she's already on a boat across the Waking Sea."

"I hope I'm not intruding." Merrill looks up to him, her green eyes drawing him in like pools of water in the summer.

"No," Alrahel hurries to say. "You're not intruding at all. I'm glad that you're here, very glad."

"Shall we go back to Skyhold then?" Varric thankfully interrupts him before he can babble on. "I'm sure Leliana's spies are already circling us here."

"You have spies here?" Merrill bounces along the path to the gate, unperturbed by the weight of her pack. She bends down occasionally and adds another flower to the bundle in her hand. Alrahel wants to offer to carry the pack for her but then he notices that the pack floats on her back, the weight not pulling at the straps at all. The way she's using magic so naturally is such a refreshing change to the repressed circle magic around him or the performative magic that Dorian displays.

"What a huge building," Merrill says as the gates of Skyhold come into view, with the main building peeking over the edge of the wall. She goes through the gate with easy steps, looking up and left and right to take everything in. Her expression is full of wonder, and as she points out the pattern of vines on the walls and how the sun peeks around the curve of a roof, Alrahel sees all that for the first time too.

"There's magic here in the base of the buildings, isn't there?" Merrill asks. "It's so much warmer inside of the walls."

"It always feels like Skyhold has its own song," Alrahel says. He has never told anybody that he can hear Skyhold's magic.

Merril looks at him with a wide smile. "Yes! It's like a song, you're right. But different than songs today." She takes a sudden turn towards a wall and pushes green vines away. "Look, a symbol."

Alrahel comes to her side and looks at the faint marks on the stones, paint that has long flaked off and only left faint marks. "Do you know what it means?" 

Merrill traces the pattern with her fingertip, laying her head to the side. "This could be for Dirthamen, or a sign for one of their followers. Signs like this were often meant as a warning but I also think that some signs did invoke their powers directly."

"Invoke them?"

"Magic was different in old times. It was just there. Our ancestors lived _in_ it, with it, dreamed in it." She still looks at the symbol on the wall but her eyes are unfocussed. "We don't know exactly what these symbols mean, we can only guess. But I have seen texts that seem to say that they have powers of themselves and..." She turns to him and giggles. "You have to stop me or I'll keep rambling."

"No, this is really interesting. Solas says things like that too."

"I should talk to him then."

"No, I mean, sure." Why did he mention Solas? He doesn't want her to talk to Solas, he wants her to keep talking to him. "I'll introduce you later."

Alrahel leads Merrill up the main stairs. He holds his hand out to hover over her back because she keeps looking anywhere but where she sets her feet. Her face shows a wonderment that he feels like a song in his heart, watching her lets him see everything anew too. She follows the flight of a raven over their heads, straining her neck as she turns, and this time she actually loses her footing. 

She shrieks and in her shock, the magic holding her pack up disappears and the pack pulls her down. Her foot steps on empty air. Alrahel grabs her arm and pulls her close to him, wrapping his other arm around her hips. The weight of the pack threatens to pull them both down and he sends a force wave from his fingertips to stop them from falling.

"I should be used to stairs," Merrill says. "Kirkwall has so many stairs." She takes a deep breath and the weight of her pack stops pulling at them.

But Alrahel doesn't let go. She feels so right in his arms, as if she belongs there and all he can think of is how he wants to kiss the curve of her neck. He wants to kiss her as he listens to her tell him of Kirkwall and magic and elven history and whatever else comes to her mind. He wants to sing her the songs he has learned and hear what she knows about the story behind them. He wants to keep her in his arms and never let go.

"Come on, Alra," Varric says as he climbs past them, "I'm sure Josephine is already waiting to meet our new scholar of elven history."

"Yes, ehm." He wills his arms to let go. Merrill looks up to him, a confused look on her face and Alrahel begs silently for the Fade to swallow him on the spot. He's made a fool of himself once again. He doesn't even know her and already fantasizes about her like a horny druffalo. 

He lets go of her and steps back, holding his hands up as if she burned him. She looks even more confused now and hurt. He's making everything worse. Desperately he turns to Varric. "Why don't you take Merrill to Josephine, I have to... I have to be somewhere." He runs off before Varric can answer and only turns around again when he is hidden in the stables.

Varric finds him there a good while later, singing to his favorite horse Sally. She is a fidgety thing and doesn't like to be touched by anybody but when Alrahel sings to her, she lets him brush her. He notices Varric coming in but he finishes the song and the brushing first, before he turns to him.

"Is she very mad at me?"

"Merrill? Oh Singer, Daisy doesn't know how to be mad at anyone. She thinks she's angered you."

"No!" Alrahel lets Sally out into the paddock and looks after her as she heads for the next dust puddle to get all dirty again. "No, she didn't anger me at all, quite the opposite."

Varric nods. "She's a pretty one."

"No. I mean yes, she's very pretty but that's not why..."

"Why you stared at her as if she's all you ever dreamed about?"

"No, yes. I..." He walks over to Varric and flops down on a stool that someone must have left there. "She's so smart and she looks at everything with such wonder. I never looked at this place, how nice it is and she..."

"I'm gonna shut you up there," Varric says and pulls Merrill into the stable. "Cause I think you should just tell her all this yourself." Varric raises his hand in a wave and then closes the stable door behind himself.

The light in the dusty stable is dim now and Alrahel has trouble reading Merrill's face. She is quiet and he can feel more than see her gaze resting on him. 

Alrahel plays with his braid and tries to think of something clever. Nothing of the sort comes to his mind. "So, I don't know what you heard — "

"You said I'm pretty and smart and that I look at everything with wonder."

"So you heard all of it."

"Did you mean it?"

"Yes." He means all of it, a thousand times over.

"You just met me."

"I know."

Merrill comes closer to him, a ray light from one of the windows falling on her face. She smiles at him. "Varric says that you sing."

Alrahel stands up and takes a step towards her. "Yes."

"Can you sing for me?"

"What kind of song do you like?

Merrill takes another step towards him, taking his hand in hers. "An old song, one that even your keeper called old."

Alrahel swallows and pulls her hand up to his lips. Pressing a kiss on her fingers, he tries to think of a song for her but his mind is completely blank. "I... I can't think of anything."

Merrill laughs softly. "Maybe later." She grabs his hand tighter and raises herself on her tiptoes to press a kiss to the corner of his lips. "Will you sing for me later?" she whispers against his lips.

"Yes, I promise." 

"Lady Josephine wanted to show me to my room but — "

Alrahel strains after her lips as she moves away. "I can do that!" 

Merrill giggles. "Alright." They keep standing there in the dim and dusty ray of light until Merrill turns around and pulls him after her and out of the stable. "Show me to my room, Inquisitor Alrahel."

"I think you should meet the war council first, Advisor Merrill." 

Merrill links her arm in his and smiles up to him. "And then?"

"And then I want to show you my favorite place in the garden. And the place up on the walkway where you see the mountains through the battlements."

"Can you sing for me there?"

"Yes. And then.."

"What?" Merrill smiles at him and her eyes sparkle like drops of dew on a flower petal.

Alrahel squeezes her hand and grins. "Then I want to show you the library."

Merrill's eyes go wide. "You have a library?"

"Yes, there's even books in elven."

Alrahel has never see anybody's eyes go so wide and he wants to make Merrill this happy for the rest of their lives.


End file.
